Rewild.com

/riˈwīld/

verb

to reverse the process of domestication.

to return to a more wild or self-willed state.

Rewilding means restoring ancestral ways of living that create greater health and well-being for humans and the ecosystems that we belong to. Many things inspire people to rewild: ecological collapse, economic uncertainties, health problems, a sense of something missing from life, or a desire to “save the world.” Rewilding takes inspiration from the most modern interpretations of prehistory provided by anthropology, archaeology, and ethnobiology. It means returning to our senses, returning to ourselves, and coming home to the world we belong to.

Few will doubt that humankind has created a planet-sized problem for itself. No one wished it so, but we are the first species to become a geophysical force, altering Earth's climate, a role previously reserved for tectonics, sun flares, and glacial cycles.

Many of the crises we see in the 21st century, I would argue, have their roots in the dawn of the Neolithic

Spencer Wells

When we talk about the evolution of our genus Homo over the past two million years, we run into our brains’ limits to really understanding big numbers. To help put it into perspective, take a look at the timeline below.

Each pixel in height represents 500 years.*

* That means that a single pixel in height here separates you from the reign of King Henry VIII.

The Paleolithic

The Neolithic

Meaning “New Stone Age.” Some people in a few isolated areas start farming.

All of Recorded History

The past 5,000 years of recorded history.

The past 10,000 years highlighted in green and red have seen an explosion of cultural and even biological change as we’ve learned to cope with living in a new way deeply antagonistic to our previous evolution, but it still represents a flash in the pan, not the inevitable destiny of our species.

The tribal life and no other is the gift of natural selection to humanity. It is to humanity what pack life is to wolves, pod life is to whales, and hive life is to bees. After three or four million years of human evolution, it alone emerged as the social organization that works for people. People like the tribal organization because it works equally well for all members.

Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure

The Original Affluent Society

Thomas Hobbes described the “state of nature” as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” and though ethnographic and archaeological evidence has overturned each one of those claims individually over the past century, the common perception of hunter-gatherer life hasn’t kept pace with what we now know about it.

Hunter-gatherers have more leisure time.

Some people say that the advent of farming gave people more leisure time to build up civilization, but hunter-gatherers actually have far more leisure time than farmers do, and more still than modern people in the industrialized world.

Hunter-gatherers enjoy long, healthy lives.

The beginning of agriculture brought with it the Neolithic Mortality Crisis, a sudden and catastrophic drop in longevity that agricultural people have really never recovered from. Modern medicine has achieved great things, but it still hasn’t completely closed that gap, and it still means that only a wealthy elite can enjoy the longevity once available to everyone.

Hunter-gatherers have peaceful, prosperous societies.

Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins described hunter-gatherers as “the original affluent society.” Only a wistful romantic would try to call it perfect, but despite the arguments of some modern authors, the fact remains that archaeological and ethnographic evidence shows us that hunting and gathering can provide a peaceful and prosperous way of life.

Hunter-gatherers lead more happy, meaningful lives.

More than anything else, hunter-gatherer and other traditional societies define themselves in terms of their social bonds, giving each member a sense of belonging and purpose, connecting her to the rest of her family and to a web of kinship that binds together a broader, more-than-human world.

Humans haven’t always destroyed the world around them.

For 2,000,000 years humans evolved in traditional societies, and though they undoubtedly had as much an impact on the world as wolves or lions, they did not cause mass extinctions. We don’t represent all of humanity, and the way we live doesn’t represent human nature or our destiny.

Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

Rewild Your Home.

The Neolithic Revolution has claimed most of the planet’s surface for agriculture, but you can help rewild the place where you dwell.

Bioregionalism

Political boundaries rarely line up with the ecological zones that really determine our lives. A bioregional focus means becoming aware of things like your local watershed and ecosystem, and focusing on the issues that affect it.

Tending the Wild

If “wild” means untouched by humans, then few places on earth can claim the title. Indigenous people did not just live off the land, but made it flourish. The Amazon Rain Forest and the Great Plains stand as examples of their generational work. Rewilding means taking on that responsibility to tend the wild.

The officials claimed the land for the government. The natives were astonished by the claim. They couldn’t understand what these relative newcomers were talking about. Finally one of the elders put what was bothering them in the form of a question. ‘If this is your land,’ he asked, ‘where are your stories?’

J. Edward Chamberlin, If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?

Rewild Your Community.

Ancestral skills play an important part in rewilding, but few traditional societies would put them in the center. They tend to put emphasis on a more difficult task: learning how to cooperate, how to make decisions as a community, and how to repair strained relationships.

Social Technology

We may tell ourselves that without governments and laws society could not function, but the archaeological and ethnographic evidence of traditional societies show us that most human societies have flourished without them. However, after millennia of hierarchical interactions, it can take some time to relearn how to live as a free person, and how to cooperate with other free persons.

Oral Tradition

Oral traditions carried the relationships that bound together people and the land, recorded history, and encoded vast stores of knowledge. Unfortunately, most people today have lost that inheritance. Rewilding covers some unexpected techniques for regenerating an authentic oral tradition.

It is not necessary to ‘go back’ in time to be the kind of creature you are. The genes from the past have come forward to us. I am asking that people change not their genes but their society, in order to harmonize with the inheritance they already have.

Paul Shepard, The Only World We’ve Got

Rewild Yourself.

Humans have become domesticated, and that hasn’t worked out very well for any of us. Rewilding means reversing that process and reclaiming our human birthright.

Ancestral Skills

The skills needed to find food, create fire, shelter, and clothing, to treat wounds and illnesses, and otherwise make a living from the land provide independence and freedom. Ancestral skills don’t simply provide for a meager life of mere survival, though; they can provide the keys to true abundance and wealth.

Ancestral Health

We’ve learned to accept a level of health as domesticated animals far below that enjoyed by our ancestors. From the Paleo diet to barefoot walking, to our sleeping patterns, primal movement, and more, rewilding means reclaiming a standard of health and well-being that can seem like gaining super-powers now.